I Cant Escape: Darkness Review

Have you ever played Legend of Grimmok? Yep that’s right, that was a great FPS dungeon crawler, I can’t escape? it has a long way to go yet.

I Can’t Escape: Darkness is the spiritual successor to the popular 2013 game “I Can’t Escape”. Created by Fancy Fish Games, I Cant Escape: Darkness is an atmospheric horror adventure game that I really wanted to love, i really did and maybe one day i will but today is not that day, and i shall tell you why.

First of all its a dungeon crawler, very much so in the vain of Legend of Grimmok. The aim of the game is to get to the lower levels of the labyrinth like hallways whilst dodging various terrors and traps along the way. Very little explanation is given at the beginning of the game and is left for you to find out.

The levels consist of very well drawn sprites which reek of retro, which i love by the way. The design of the levels are your typical dark and maze like hallways with animals, ghosts and demons around every turn. That is all fine but after that it tends to fall apart a bit.

The controls for me are just bad, that’s the only way to describe them. To traverse the hallways you can use either a keyboard or gamepad, I’d recommend a gamepad but honestly it doesn’t matter as the controls are clunky and awkward regardless of what you pick. I found keyboard+mouse to be much easier. The gamepad seemed a bit cumbersome and I did experience some wandering crosshairs. The controls consist of forward one step, sideways one step, backwards one step and so on, this was fine 20 years ago but by today standards it is plodding and let’s be honest slightly boring.

The gameplay has you walking, rather slowly around the darkness with various weapons you come across along the way. The combat however is for lack of a better word frustrating. The first level you have a stick, which is practically useless as the hit detection is not very well done. Once you hear an enemy around you then have to slowly turn around in order to find it only to be killed by said enemy before you see it or have any chance to hurt it. When you die, you are sent back to the beginning with the level with the amount of steps you took in your previous playthrough and told to start again.

The music is great, it adds a lot to the atmosphere which i must admit this game does quite well and does bring some tension along with it. The SFX could have been better in my opinion though and on times sounded a bit “Thwacky”, if you know what i mean.

Another thing that bothered me and this is not really about the game but more of the game developers site itself. If you want to look the game up to see what it’s about or what kind of game it is you could go to the main “I Cant Explain” website right? No, instead when you go to the site you are greeted with a flash website which then proceeds to immediately throw the price of the game and a paypal splash screen with only links to their twitter or facebook. I’m sorry guys but this is not the way to advertise or “sell” your game, and when i say “sell” i don’t mean give me a price.

Now this is only a small indie company and i am all for indie games and companies, i give a lot to various kick starters and always give them a chance as i know only too well how hard it is to get into the industry and make a mark but for me this is not the way to go about it.

I can’t tell you how the game eventually played out in the later levels as unfortunately my frustration got the better of me. Maybe I’m a bad gamer? who knows but what that tells me is that the game is not very user-friendly.

I feel quite bad about this review because i know how much hard work goes into a game, even the small ones, but I have to end by saying that maybe in the near future i will have a change of heart and go back to this game and give it another try, but for now i give up on it and hope that this is just a glitch in their creative development. Here’s hoping. My score for this barely scrapes average and does so only due to the fantastic music and artistic environments.

REVIEW CODE: Here at Brash Games we have a strict Review Code policy, Paul Ryan owner / editor is the only member of staff at Brash Games permitted to obtain review code and distribute it within the Brash Games review team. No other person is permitted to request review code and or send review links or contact the publishers in any way whatsoever. Should you wish to send us review code please email paulryan-at-brashgames.co.uk.

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Comments (3)

David Maletz September 25, 2015

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the review. I was a bit confused about your comment about the website, so I thought I’d leave a comment and see if you had the right URL. The site is not a flash website, and it includes lots of trailers and screenshots (although admittedly only one news post… I should really update that). You said the main site was “I Can’t Explain” so maybe you found the wrong website as the url is icantescape dot com.

Like i say in the review i do feel bad about the score i gave it as i can only imagine how hard you and your team worked on the game. Maybe i had a bad experience with it? i don’t know as i have seen other people enjoy the game alot, but for me this was my experience and i have to be honest in my own opinion. The website address you gave is the same one i went to a few times and every time i go there I’m greeted by a pay pal window for the game, and some links to twitter and facebook and such on the right. Maybe i’m not navigating it properly and if I’m not I’ll happily change that part of the review. I hope you don’t take my view as gospel as i’m just one person and like i said I’ve seen people enjoying this game, i can only comment on my own experience. Keep up the work regardless.

I won’t lie and say I don’t feel bad about the score, but as you said, that is entirely your opinion and I do believe it is important for you to be honest. The thing I’m more worried about is what you said about the website, as it might be a bug or problem with the site. Can you scroll down on the website? Maybe I should move the humble widget below the trailers section so that it’s more obvious the website scrolls…